A blog about how technology is transforming media

Hype

A 23-post collection

The death of email meme is completely absurd. Email is NOT going to die because, as Charlie O’Donnell points out, EVERYONE HAS EMAIL. That’s why we all get so much spam and other useless email — because it’s a guaranteed way to reach us. Inboxes are getting flooded »

A whole mythology is emerging around the idea of “users” — consumers, fans, regular average folk — creating content that media companies and brands can leverage. It’s a compelling idea — but it’s a myth. The reality is that “average people” don’t create a lot of content — at least not »

When I argued that Facebook is NOT for business, that assertion was roundly dismissed by Facebook’s tech fan club, determined to prove (with Mark Zuckerberg gleefully rooting them on) that Facebook is a serious business tool. In today’s NYT, a more authoritative voice weighs in — one of Facebook’ »

Ok, so shame on me for writing so much about the iPhone without actually having used it, but I fixed that today by spending a couple of hours in an Apple store playing with the iPhone. Granted this is much more limited than the experience of long-term use, but it »

The discussion about Facebook Platform being the new AOL, i.e. redundant to the platform we already have called the Internet, has rung true for me, despite my initial enthusiasm. I finally figured out exactly why — Facebook Platform applications are appended, not integrated. For example — why can’t I use »

A backlash against “new media” ideology and disingenuousness seems to be simmering at this year’s We Media conference. From Mark Glaser at MediasShift: My personal definition of â€œwe mediaâ€� is the movement toward an empowered audience, who can customize their media experience and create their own media, leaving »

Last summer, in It’s The Users Calling…They Want Their Money, I wrote: User-generated content is going through a novelty phase, where most â€œusersâ€� are content with attention as a form of recompense for their efforts. But for savvy â€œusersâ€� â€” or in this case video production »

There’s something about the “social” in “social media” and “social networking” and “social” everything that keeps raising my hackles, no matter how much I believe in the best elements (and intentions) of those much hyped phenomena. And it seems that I’m not alone. From Richard Siklos at the »

According to SEO Todd Mailcoat, getting three stories to the homepage of Digg puts you in the top 1% of Digg users, and it takes “months” to build up a what Todd calls a “reputable” Digg account. Those statistics struck me as stunning, so I decided to dig into Digg’ »

The Cluetrain guys had their hearts in the right place when they said that markets are conversations, but, unfortunately, when corporations try to do the conversation thing, they typically end up making a mess and a mockery and looking utterly clue-less. You’ve got fake blogs, undisclosed paid blog posts, »

Time magazine has made “you” the “person of the year because “we” are now in control of the media — a “link bait” ploy that deconstructs itself because “we” did not choose to put “us” on the cover of Time. Doh! How do I emblazon “SILLY HYPE” on “my” cover of »